Exploring the Intersection of Sports, Blockchain & NFTs at Korean Blockchain Week 2025

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In this Edge of Show special from Korea Blockchain Week 2025, host Josh Kriger dives deep into Web3 cross-chain innovation with three very different builders who are reshaping NFTs, fan finance, and interoperability.

First, Cameron Gates, CEO of ApeCo and former head of ApeCoin DAO, explains how the community evolved beyond a sprawling DAO into a more agile structure, why ApeChain is aiming at a $100B+ vision with Otherside, and how Project RAID is pushing Web3 cross-chain innovation by taking ApeCoin from Ethereum into ecosystems like Solana and Hyper.

Then NBA champion Tristan Thompson breaks down why he fell in love with DeFi yields, how basketball.fun turns prediction markets and fantasy into a fan-owned layer for valuing players, and why AxonDAO brings Web3 cross-chain innovation into on-chain health data.

Finally, Jonathan Covey from ZetaChain shares how universal apps, cross-chain DEX design, and unified stablecoin liquidity can make Web3 cross-chain innovation feel as seamless as using the internet. If you care about where NFTs, DeFi, sports, and AI-powered agents are actually going, this conversation is a must.

Key Topics Covered

• The new phase of NFTs and ApeCoin’s evolution
  Cameron Gates unpacks how NFTs are moving from boom-and-bust to sustainable Web3 cross-chain innovation, why ApeCoin DAO chose to sunset, and how a focused executive structure plus Project RAID and ApeChain are positioning the ecosystem for multi-cycle growth instead of short-term hype.
• When DAOs work – and when they don’t
  Cameron explains that DAOs thrive when they govern a single tool or product, but become unwieldy when mandates and interests explode. He contrasts product-focused DAOs with ApeCoin’s broad mandate, showing how complexity can clash with agility even in a passionate Web3 community.
• Project RAID and ApeChain’s multi-chain expansion
  The team’s Web3 cross-chain innovation strategy with Project RAID uses partners like LayerZero to bring ApeCoin beyond Ethereum into Arbitrum, ApeChain, Solana and Hyper, meeting holders where they already are and turning Ape ecosystems into a truly multi-chain culture layer.
• Bored Ape Yacht Club, Otherside and a $100B metaverse ambition
  Cameron talks about the long-term mission behind Bored Ape Yacht Club, ApeFest and Otherside—framing ApeChain as infrastructure aimed at “taking down Roblox” and building a $100B entertainment universe powered by community and Web3 cross-chain innovation, not just points farming.
• Tristan Thompson on DeFi yields vs TradFi frustration
  Tristan shares how seeing 8–12% yields on blue-chip DeFi protocols versus sub-4% bank returns pulled him into crypto, and how that personal awakening around digital assets and Web3 cross-chain innovation led to him educating other players in the locker room.
• basketball.fun: on-chain fan engagement and prediction markets
  With basketball.fun, Tristan blends fantasy, prediction markets and Web3. Fans draft and tokenize players, make on-chain calls week to week, and compete on leaderboards—earning rewards for insight while participating in a new fan-governed layer of value around athletes.
• AxonDAO and on-chain health data sovereignty
  Tristan explains how AxonDAO uses Web3 cross-chain innovation to give people control over their medical data, solving real problems like moving records between cities or countries and enabling better research and treatments through globally accessible, patient-owned data.
• ZetaChain’s universal apps and AI-ready infrastructure
  Jonathan Covey describes ZetaChain’s mission to make Web3 cross-chain innovation feel like the internet: deploy once in Solidity, reach users on Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana and more. This unified layer lets AI agents act cross-chain without juggling dozens of wallets and private keys.
• New cross-chain DEX designs and VE(3,3) tokenomics
  Jonathan spotlights ecosystem DEXs like Beam and Zuno, which use VE(3,3) models to align liquidity providers, governance and protocol health, bringing sustainable incentives and Web3 cross-chain innovation to swaps that span multiple chains and native assets.
• Unified stablecoin liquidity and the TOBA initiative
  With stablecoins proliferating across blockchains, Jonathan explains how TOBA’s unified liquidity layer can accept many native stablecoins and mint a universal representation—unlocking cleaner UX for devs and users while preserving the benefits of Web3 cross-chain innovation.

Episode Highlights

1. On the NFT cycle and what comes next

“We saw a big boom, we saw contraction, concentration and now evolution. Everyone focused on the retracement is missing that we have a ton of growth and a ton of new cycles in front of us.” – Cameron Gates

1. On when DAOs stop working

“Where you have a DAO with a much broader, multifaceted purpose, it becomes very hard. There are competing interests, different voting factions, very different views on what should lead—and that makes it difficult to stay agile.” – Cameron Gates

1. On why fans need on-chain power

“We always say fans are the most important people and mean the most to the sport—but let’s put our money where our mouth is and really give the fans an opportunity to step up, have a voice, and determine the value of a player.” – Tristan Thompson

1. On the power of prediction markets and community

“If a community can come together with a belief and it actually comes to fruition, that shows you how powerful this community is. So why can’t we do this in sports?” – Tristan Thompson

1. On why universal apps matter for Web3

“The missing critical piece is how to have a unified experience where apps just work like the internet. You deploy one universal app on ZetaChain and it can access users on Solana, Ethereum—even Bitcoin itself.” – Jonathan Covey

People and Resources Mentioned

• Cameron Gates
• ApeCo
• ApeCoin DAO
• ApeCoin
• ApeChain
• Greg “Gargamel” Solano
• Yuga Labs
• Bored Ape Yacht Club
• Otherside
• LayerZero
• Hyper
• Tristan Thompson
• basketball.fun
• AxonDAO
• Moonwell
• Morpho
• Wasabi
• Polymarket
• Wells Fargo
• ZetaChain
• Beam
• Zuno
• TOBA
• Bitcoin
• Ethereum
• Solana

About Our Guests

Cameron Gates – CEO, ApeCo & ApeCoin Ecosystem Leader
Cameron Gates is the CEO of ApeCo and a key leader in the evolving ApeCoin ecosystem. After serving on Yuga Labs’ executive team, he stepped in as CEO of ApeCoin DAO, guiding one of Web3’s most visible communities through a critical governance and strategy transition. Cameron helped shape the decision to sunset the DAO structure in favor of a more agile, execution-focused model. Today, he leads initiatives like Project RAID and ApeChain, which aim to bring ApeCoin to multiple chains and support ambitious experiences around Bored Ape Yacht Club and Otherside. His focus on pragmatic Web3 cross-chain innovation is helping transform a once-experimental DAO into a durable, multi-chain culture and gaming platform.

Tristan Thompson – NBA Champion & Founder, basketball.fun
Tristan Thompson is an NBA champion, veteran forward/center, and now a Web3 founder focused on fan-first innovation. Known for his championship-winning career and leadership in the locker room around financial literacy, Tristan brings that same energy to crypto and DeFi. He is the founder of basketball.fun, an on-chain fantasy and prediction platform that lets fans draft tokenized players, make calls on performance, and compete on leaderboards with real rewards. Tristan is also involved with AxonDAO, a decentralized project focused on putting medical data back into patients’ hands using Web3 cross-chain innovation. Bridging elite sports, DeFi yields and digital ownership, he’s building tools that give both fans and everyday people more control over value and data.

Jonathan Covey – Core Contributor & Marketing Lead, ZetaChain
Jonathan Covey is a core contributor and marketing leader at ZetaChain, a universal blockchain designed for seamless interoperability across Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana and many other networks. With prior experience as a project lead at ConsenSys, Jonathan brings a deep understanding of Ethereum, DeFi and developer ecosystems to ZetaChain’s mission. His work centers on helping builders and users experience Web3 cross-chain innovation as easily as they browse the web—through universal apps, cross-chain DEX infrastructure and unified stablecoin liquidity layers like TOBA. Jonathan regularly engages with global developer communities, especially in APAC and Korea, advocating for an internet-like model of crypto where one Solidity app can reach users and liquidity across chains by default.

Guest Contacts

Cameron Gates

• Website Link: https://apecoin.com
• Twitter Link: https://x.com/HeadofApe

Tristan Thompson

• Website Link: https://basketball.fun
• Twitter Link: https://x.com/Roach13

Jonathan Covey

• Website Link: https://www.zetachain.com
• Twitter Link: https://x.com/Taoist_JC

Transcript:

Cameron Gates : Yeah. As we were talking about on the panel, I think that, you know, the NFT industry, a lot like other tech industries, is going through a normal cycle. We saw a big boom. We saw contraction, concentration and now evolution. And so I think, you know, everyone who's sort of focused on just the retracement is missing out that we have a ton of growth and a ton of new, you know, sort of cycles in front of us.
Tristan Thompson: So for me, it's like if I'm going to be in a space, I want to build something that's going to make me excited, but address problems that we're having. And for me, what I always notice is the fan engagement part, right? We always say fans are the most important people and they mean the most to the sport, but let's put our money where our mouth is and really give the fans an opportunity to really step up and really have a voice and really determine the value of a player.
Jonathan Covey: Like in the current fragmented ecosystem, you can't expect AI agents to manage wallets on different chains and all of these different private keys. So we want to simplify and make AI agent activity on chain a lot simpler and safer.
Intro: Welcome to The Edge of Show, your gateway to the Web3 revolution. We explore the cutting edge of blockchain, cryptocurrency, NFTs, ordinals, DeFi, gaming and entertainment, plus how AI is reshaping our digital future. Join us as we bring you visionaries and disruptors pushing boundaries in this digital renaissance. This show is for the dreamers, disruptors, and doers that are pumped about where innovation meets culture. This is where the future begins.
Josh Kriger: Hi, everyone. Welcome back to the Edge of Show. I'm here at Career Blockchain Week 2025 with Cameron, who's the CEO of ApeCo. And that's not ApeDao. We'll talk about that and some other things. Great to have you on the show. And it was fun to do that panel just, I think, like 20 minutes ago.
Cameron Gates : I appreciate you having me, Jeff.
Josh Kriger: So we were talking about sort of the evolution of NFTs and where it's all going, some interesting sort of data to sort of back up that there's still a market here. What's your take at this point? I know this is a conversation that you've had ad nauseum in this space, but you developed a pretty specific thesis, I imagine.
Cameron Gates : Yeah, as we were talking about on the panel, I think that the NFT industry, a lot like other tech industries, is going through a normal cycle. We saw a big boom, we saw contraction, concentration, and now evolution. And so I think everyone who's sort of focused on just the retracement is missing out that we have a ton of growth and a ton of new cycles in front of us.
Josh Kriger: and uh speaking of evolution um you're sharing back in sort of the the sort of uh may june july time frame pretty big decision was made to dissolve ape dow uh maybe you can kind of speak to sort of the impetus for that and you know how that kind of came about and and what's happened next Definitely. I think it's good.
Cameron Gates : It's worth giving flowers to the 8coin community, the leaders of the 8coin DAO, who for three years were at the forefront of what could DAO, what was the possibility of DAOs. There's more than 600 AIPs put up, more than 200 passed and funded. I mean, it was a very active DAO.
Intro: I think in that way it was very successful.
Cameron Gates : You know, starting in probably about 2024, you know, into 2025, we began to see how the 8-point DAO was struggling to keep up with the nimbleness and agility of some of our competitors who weren't operating under DAO structures. And the Apecoin community, I think, reacted in a really great way. They put together initially something like the Banana Bill, which was an investment fund that was set up to support Apechain's growth. And that was a more concentrated fund where there's only a few leaders that were deploying it. And I think from there, we saw that there was an opportunity to continue to evolve how the DAO was governed. And so then there was an AIP put up to actually create an executive function. And in early 2025, I was hired as the CEO. Thank you very much. You know, it was a logical extension for me, and I really appreciated Yuga's support in doing it, stepping from Yuga's exec team over. And then, you know, in my first 30, 60 days there, you began to see, even still, there was a lot of room for us to become even more agile. And I give a ton of credit to Greg, CEO of Yuga, you know, Gargamel, who saw, you know, responded to the community saying, let's evolve again, and he put up an AIP that said, let's sunset the Dow, let's do it in the right way, and let's set ourselves up for success, and ultimately 99% of the community voted in favor.
Josh Kriger: So, very cool, and congrats on the new role. I guess with respect to DOWs, you guys found that it wasn't the right fit for you. Do you have a broader perspective on when DOWs are a good fit versus when they aren't?
Cameron Gates : I think there's other DAOs in the space that have been more successful, particularly ones that are geared around a particular tool or infrastructure, where it's a decision about, you know, do you monetize? You know, who has authority over the operation? Where you have a DAO that has a purpose that is much broader and multifaceted, I think it becomes very hard. There's competing interests. There's different voting factions. There's very different views on what could be the leading, you know, foot to step out with.
Josh Kriger: So is there a size limit, you think, for a community after which DAOs become a little unwieldy?
Cameron Gates : I don't know if it's necessarily the number of people as it is the number of possibilities in front of them. So if we said you're a DAO that just operates this specific product, You could still have 50,000 people a part of it, but they all have a specific interest in the product. If you say, you know, I think the 8.9 was a little different.
Josh Kriger: We said, we have 50,000 people, do whatever you want.
Cameron Gates : That's democracy at its finest.
Josh Kriger: Diversity of opinions, diversity of goals makes for DAO to be a little bit more complicated. Makes sense. Appreciate your perspective there. And so, you know, things are rocking now. You have a new initiative you announced called RAID. Maybe you can kind of spell out, define that acronym for us and tell us what's cooking there. Yeah, I appreciate it.
Cameron Gates : So Project RAID is the rapid Apecoin integration deployment. The team's rolled it out over the last couple of weeks. And really the idea was that Apecoin has, you know, we've had community members as part of the Apecoin DAO that are across the spectrum in crypto, in the Solana ecosystem, in the base ecosystem, in the BNB ecosystem, sort of everywhere. And yet Apecoin has been stuck, you know, even though crypto is not such a wall, it's just been Ethereum based. But the tech's really evolved. We have these incredible partners at Layer Zero who have made it possible for tokens like ours to go across many chains. So that started with going from Ethereum to Arbitrum to ApeChain. And now, two weeks ago, we announced moving to Solana. I want to shout out the Solana Foundation for supporting that and all the great partners over there. And it's allowed us to interact with all of our ApeCoin holders that have already been in the Solana ecosystem, including some Apes who have been like, I've been an Ape for four years, this is my first chance to really interact with ApeCoin. And then just today we announced, we integrated with Hyper. So project RAID is continuing. We're seeing a lot of really good data coming out of it, a lot of really renewed excitement. So we look forward to it.
Josh Kriger: Yeah, I mean, look, it's sort of an analogy. Some people, let's take L.A. Some people will drive around L.A. They don't care about traffic. They want to go to Hollywood. They want to go to the beach. They want to go downtown. But then there's people that want to stay where they are, right? If they're in Venice, that's their bubble. And I think you have to be able to get to all of those people and give them a chance to be part of the community and sort of cross-chain opportunities now abound. What are you looking forward to next? Well, first, I might steal that analogy in the future, because that's a good one. So thanks for it. I think we're really excited.
Cameron Gates : I mean, we, you know, as part of the transition to 8Co, you know, Greg set out and the community supported that our missions are the Board API Club, Otherside, and 8Chain. And the Board API Club, 8Fest is coming up. Hopefully, we'll be seeing you there, maybe, in Las Vegas. A lot of exciting things coming up in October.
Josh Kriger: What's the date on that one? October 24th to 26th. OK. OK. Congratulations. Where in Miami do you see it? What better way to fly into D.C. than to be exhausted from Las Vegas?
Cameron Gates : So I'm really excited for the things we've got cooking there and we'll be sharing at A-Fest. And just really, there's nothing better than getting the club, you know, in person. Every year you just feel the excitement, you remember why you're part of the community. Other side, Michael Figge, you know, has just crushed it in terms of development. We've been sharing that, look, Our goal here isn't just to be a metaverse. We want to take down Roblox. That's a $100 billion company. That's a $100 billion vision. And we're not backing down from that. And sure, what you see today is not the end product, but it is much more polished. There's much more coming. Third-party builders are activating. I'm so excited about what we're doing with the other side. And then the Ape Chain front, we've got an incredible community. There's more than 200 different sub-communities, NFT communities on Ape Chain. We've got really great builders around gaming, around gambling. And for us, it's really just showing that the power of having a foundation in community and people can be so much stronger than having a foundation in ethos, just this idea of, I'm going to farm points or something. That wasn't us. And so those three pillars, I feel like we're really cranking on it. So really appreciate Greg and the community setting us on that path.
Josh Kriger: Yeah, right on. Well, I know you got to run. So thank you for your insights and catching us up. We'll have to have you back again for a longer episode at some point soon. If folks want to get involved in Ape Chain, see what's going on, follow you on Axe. Where should they go? Ahead of Ape. That's the best I could do.
Cameron Gates : Follow ApeCoin, A-Chain Hub, Head of Ape.
SPEAKER_07: Also go follow PeePeeMan, Simple Farmer.
Josh Kriger: There's a whole great group out there. You'll find us. All right. Thanks so much. Thanks, Josh. Let's take a pause to shout out one of our favorite partners. VR, AR, quantum computing, and more, ZuberLawler offers expert guidance in capital raising, IP transactions, M&A, litigation, and compliance. Visit ZuberLawler.com for cutting-edge legal solutions. Hi, everyone. Josh Krueger here, co-host of Edge of Show. I'm here live at Creative Blockchain League 2025. So honored to be here with Tristan Thompson, NBA superstar. Great to have you on the show. So you've been in the league a long time. You've done a lot of great stuff. You played with one of my teams, the Celtics, and won a championship. So you've had some fun. You know, I guess you developed this interest in Web3 along the way. I'm curious, like, what inspired that? When did that journey begin? Yeah, for me it's always about forward thinking about what's next, right?
Tristan Thompson: How do you want your legacy to continue on, right? I've had a lot of success playing in the NBA and winning a championship. But for me, I've always been the guy in the locker room that's talked about finance and taught guys how to manage their books, what to look for from a financial advisor, investment portfolio, how to expand. And for me, it's only right if I'm going to give this advice and tools to understand what else is happening in the digital asset world, the digital finance world.
Intro: And with that being said, it was crypto. And for myself, once I started educating myself and learning it, I've really
Tristan Thompson: got so into the space and really excited about everything that it's about. Whether it's the tech, whether it's the builders, whether it's the story, or whether it's what they're trying to fix and to make the world a better place.
Josh Kriger: Were any early projects that just caught your attention? Were you into the NFT side, the culture side? Meme coins are more of the big cap projects. I'm just curious.
Tristan Thompson: yeah for me it was more so from the the meme and the defi side right because i think for myself um you know the memes i was so intriguing because you would see on twitter these guys are saying i'm getting a 10x 100x on my money so you know you don't see that in the in the regular tradfi uh centralized institutional world, right, where I'm originally from, right, Native too.
Intro: So for me, it's intriguing to understand what is really going on in this space.
Tristan Thompson: So obviously, with the means that it's almost like, you know, it's the D-Gen, high gambling, risk-taking, Las Vegas type of mindset, which is totally fine, but also the DeFi side, which I love, which is basically a better version of what Wells Fargo is offering. You know, when you go to Wells Fargo, your investment banker says, hey, I'm gonna give you 4% of your money or 4.5%
SPEAKER_02: 4%, that would be a good day.
Tristan Thompson: Yeah, but remember, they tell you 4% and after you give them your money, they have the fees, all this other... Change the rate.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, change the rate.
Tristan Thompson: All the underlining, you're walking with 2%, maybe 1%. But for me, in the DeFi space, in terms of what you're using, you know, the Moonwell of the world, the Morphos, Wasabi, you know, you can put USDC in these bucks and you're getting right now, you know, 8% to 12%. So, you know, for me, it was like, those are the things that have application to real world and my world where people can digest it and really understand.
Josh Kriger: Yeah I mean it's been fascinating to see how the banks have responded to the stablecoin legislation and they're not happy right because you know they wanted people to have their 0.025% interest and not have alternatives so the idea that crypto brings these unique opportunities on chain is really exciting and You know, I guess at some point you decided you want to get your hands dirty. So that's the genesis of basketball.fun. How did that come about?
Tristan Thompson: Yeah, for me, creating basketball.fun was like, what can I build in this? I'm a builder at heart, right?
Josh Kriger: For me to get to the NBA, you got to build yourself up to become one. You don't wake up and just become an NBA player, right?
Tristan Thompson: So for me, I had to build on it. You can only imagine, right?
Intro: It's like the grind, the hustle, the work ethic.
Tristan Thompson: So for me, it's like, if I'm going to be in this space, I want to build something that's going to make me excited, but address problems that we're having. And for me, what I always notice is the fan, the fan engagement part, right? How do we, we always say fans are the most important people and they mean the most to the sport, but let's put our money where our mouth is and really give the fans an opportunity to really step up and really have a voice and really determine the value of a player.
Josh Kriger: I love that. So how does that actually work? Like, um, you know, someone's a fan of yours. Um, how can they sort of participate in that process on chain?
Tristan Thompson: Well, we're going to go live week before the season starts basketball. And basically imagine for people at home is imagine on, on chain. Fantasy basketball, but we're also adding a prediction market obviously a prediction market. That's been a huge thing with with Paulie market Yeah, I mean one of the most successful aspects of the industry they were our news during the election They were they were more reliable and credible than CNN and Fox News so that shows you something that the community if you grab a bunch of people and who have an idea.
Intro: We don't know.
Tristan Thompson: Some people were from the White House. Some people were in the thick of things that had the intel. But if it shows you a community can come together with an idea or have a belief and it actually come to fruition, that shows you how powerful this community is. So why can't we not do this in sports?
Josh Kriger: It's a good question and a good problem to try to solve. So on the flip side, how do you make sure that what you're building has community ingrained in it? It's not just about the speculation.
Tristan Thompson: Yeah, well, the way we're going to do it is we are going to let the fans and the people in the community determine the value of the players, right?
Josh Kriger: But also with anything, right?
Tristan Thompson: With any project or with any company, right?
Intro: You've got to incentivize the community for participating, right?
Tristan Thompson: So for me, we look at it, the more the more wins you get, the more right calls, the more wins you get, the more rewards you get, the more tokens you get, the more you incentivize, and to make it even cooler, which everyone loves, is a leaderboard. If you create a leaderboard with who and the project, everyone that's playing in the community, if you have a leaderboard every year of who the top 10 success, that have the most wins, are making the right calls, then you give them extra incentives behind it, right?
Intro: I think you make it a game within a game.
Tristan Thompson: Obviously the game is drafting the right players, tokenizing the right guys to show value, but the other game is that you're competing with the rest of the chain, with everyone that's playing this game.
Josh Kriger: And if you don't draft the right players out of the gate, is there any kind of redo possible? Yeah, so it's play to earn, right? So every week and every moment you could change, you could swap guys out, no different than fantasy.
Tristan Thompson: When guys are getting dropped, waived, trading, you could do all that and change. So we're allowing where you don't have to be pigeonholed with whoever you draft stay with the whole year. But that's why it's, that's the cool thing about the blockchain. You can always mix and match, recreate your team every week, depending on who's having a good week or a bad week.
Josh Kriger: Cool, and what's been the response from from your fans from the community so far?
Tristan Thompson: I mean social media a lot of Dave Dave the response and The feel everyone's like it's about time about time. We could have a voice and we're able to really Show people what we think who are the best players who are the most valuable players in fantasy sports and from a prediction market side I want to be a disruptor and in terms of that is like bring up questions and creating pools of Not the question that you just can't ask on NBA today It's like let's get the nitty-gritty NBA questions that people really want to know
Josh Kriger: So that's really cool. Beyond Basketball That Fun, you are sort of keeping involved in other aspects of the community, including AxonDAO. Can you tell us a little bit more about that?
Tristan Thompson: Yes, AxonDAO is an on-chain D-type project, basically taking your on-chain health data and putting it upon your hands. I think the most frustrating part, especially for myself growing up, when my brother was in epilepsy, the most frustrating part was having his medical data being able to offer to other physicians to get second, third opinions.
SPEAKER_02: Especially if he's moving around with you to different cities, it's a lot of hassle. Yeah, so then you know the hassle of trying to get your health charts.
Tristan Thompson: You've got to email or call your doctor.
SPEAKER_02: They're probably on vacation. I'm a nomad and it's a nightmare. Yeah, it's a nightmare and headache. So imagine being in a habit of palming your hands wherever you are. You could be in Korea and go see a doctor.
Tristan Thompson: You could be in Africa and go see a doctor. But I love that it allows us to be able to create brown groundbreaking success stories, groundbreaking treatments, but give people access all over the world to get the needs and help and want they may need.
Josh Kriger: Yeah, I love the juxtaposition of having fun with the other project and the new is something very meaningful and serious. Obviously, both are meaningful, but a different type of project there. We have a panel at the capital event I mentioned to you about Deci and health care and innovation there. And I think there's tremendous applications for blockchain for transparency, for owning your data. So very cool to hear that. And I guess like, just taking a step back, you've had a chance to engage with other athletes. How do you see blockchain impacting sort of the journey of sort of upcoming athletes and sort of their perspective on sort of finance and capitalism and sort of, you know, financial planning? Yeah, no, I think something's been great. I mean, a lot of guys have been asking more questions about the curriculum space and really understanding what am I doing.
Tristan Thompson: And I think for me, being in the pioneering space is kind of paying it forward and educating. I think in order to onboard the masses and do the mass adoption, we got to educate and give that literacy where they feel comfortable opening a wallet, knowing that this is not an FTX situation, it's not a scam.
Josh Kriger: There's actually great protocols and great people in the space that actually want to make this world a better place and just align yourself with those people. Respect, respect. So basketball.fun is exciting. Do you have like broader ideas around where you want to take this next and what does that roadmap look like? I mean for me I want to do this with all sports. I think it's obviously basketball because of my background and everything.
Tristan Thompson: to the first pinnacle, but I want to cover all sports. Obviously, you know you have big things coming up, whether it's Olympics, World Cup, and other sports.
Josh Kriger: So I want to keep building on and expanding each and every day. If people want to get involved, be part of the launch, what should they do? Yeah, we're launching the site.
Tristan Thompson: I would love people to get on. The great thing about the space is that early signups, there's incentives behind it. We're going to be giving out rewards, airdrops. There's going to be incentives for those early signups that put their email in. So then when we do launch, You'll be rewarded for being one of our early believers or people that want to be part of the space and give the project a try. And one thing about us, we're just trying to provide info five meets, you know, sports betting, sports gambling, and prediction market.
Josh Kriger: I love it. And if people want to follow you on X, where do they go?
Tristan Thompson: Yeah, Roach13 is my X account, X Twitter, whatever you like to call it. But keep up with me, follow me. I respond. I see everything.
SPEAKER_02: So appreciate the love. All right. Appreciate you. Appreciate you having me. Thank you.
Josh Kriger: That's so cool.
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Josh Kriger: Hi, everyone. This is Josh Trigger, co-host of The Edge of Show, live at Career Blockchain Week 2025. Really proud to be back here for the third year in a row and a media partner for a great event. The line is around the corner to get in here. And I'm cozy in the Walker Hill Library with Jonathan Covey, the Chief Marketing Officer at Zeta Chains. Great to have you on the show. Great to meet you. Thank you. So for a little bit of background, ZetaChain is a universal blockchain enabling native interoperability across Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, and beyond. So you got the big three. And seven more beyond that. Seven more beyond. So that's really exciting what you're doing and looking forward to sort of diving in. I guess my first question is just, you know, what brings you to Korea and what's the significance of this market for ZetaChain?
Jonathan Covey: Yeah, definitely an important market in Korea in terms of trading volume. And I think a lot of trends are shaping up around stable coins. That's the big topic of conversation. A lot of banks and institutions and even the government itself is supporting like a one peg to stable coin. So we're very interested in that and scaling a core contributor team in Korea to build brand awareness and host events, engage developers. So it's been a focus for a number of years now.
Josh Kriger: Very cool. And you guys are all about the universal chain agnostic infrastructure concept. I'm curious, what was the ideation on this? Where is the market hole coming from? Is it folks that are just tired of all these different chains? There's this concept of interoperability across chains, but this is a little bit different. Can you tell me more?
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so the whole thesis behind ZetaChain is that Bitcoin was never going to suffice for all of the use cases in crypto.
Jonathan Covey: And so we saw Ethereum come online and there are new blockchains popping up all the time like Solana, Sui with different programming languages. But the missing critical piece is how do you have a unified experience across all of them in a way where apps just work like the internet? Like in classic internet, you deplore a website, anyone with an internet connection can access it. So how do you have that same experience in crypto because all of these blockchains offer unique advantages. And so the thesis of ZetaChain and what it provides as a universal blockchain is access to the utility across all of these diverse chains.
Josh Kriger: That makes a lot of sense. And you have the Unison upgrade, which is sort of the idea of giving the app world superpowers. Can you tell us a little bit more about that?
Jonathan Covey: Yeah, so this was the latest ZetaChain protocol upgrade. And there's a lot packed in it. The main thing is bringing ZetaChain more into Ethereum compatibility. So it's an EVM programming layer. And the superpowers is that you just deploy one universal app on ZetaChain and it can access users on Solana, Ethereum, even Bitcoin network itself.
Josh Kriger: So game-changing.
Jonathan Covey: Yeah, because as a developer you can deploy like a Uniswap contract out of the box or curve and with very little code change it becomes universal.
Josh Kriger: And what languages can you code in to sort of develop these apps, or is it just across the board, whatever you want?
Jonathan Covey: Yeah, so right now, EVM, so Solidity.
Josh Kriger: Okay.
Jonathan Covey: Which, like, people talk about Solana, and of course it's super important and very active. and sui with the move language and there's a lot of hype and stuff but in reality most adoption and familiarity with devs is still Solidity and the beauty of ZetaChain is you can write in that familiar language but then access the Solana ecosystem for example without having to reinvent the wheel and hire a Rust engineer so you get access to all of these chains.
Josh Kriger: What's the sort of supply and demand right now for Solidity developers? At one point it was really hard to find a Solidity developer, but I assume there's been more and more folks that are sort of coming up to speed on Solidity over the last year or so.
Jonathan Covey: Yeah, I don't know the exact numbers, but I think it continues to be the dominant programming language and Ethereum is certainly durable and
Josh Kriger: last thing. Makes sense. And I guess, are you guys dabbling with AI at all in terms of the capabilities of ZetaChain and sort of helping programmers to sort of enhance their skills? Yeah, definitely.
Jonathan Covey: I feel like every company now is a tech company or they put AI in the name. But like when it comes down to the nuts and bolts, ZetaChain provides this standard interoperability layer and makes it very simple for AI agents to act upon and do cross-chain stuff.
Intro: So I think we're positioned well for that.
Jonathan Covey: And like in the current fragmented ecosystem, you can't expect AI agents to manage wallets on different chains and all these different private keys. So we want to simplify and make AI agent activity on chain a lot simpler and safer.
Josh Kriger: Cool. And speaking of new products, you're also introducing a new model for cross-chain DEX design. Can you tell us a little bit more about that? Yeah.
Jonathan Covey: So this is a team in the ecosystem that's building a new DEX. And we work with them closely.
Intro: There's a few.
Jonathan Covey: There's Zuno and also Beam, which is like a flagship cross-chain DEX. So think Uniswap, but you can do native transactions between ETH for Bitcoin on Bitcoin network or any sort of combination of DeFi assets.
Cameron Gates : But the cool thing about them is that they're implementing this VE33 model.
Jonathan Covey: to their DEX, so like Arrowdrome is a good example on base, and it solves a lot of the challenges of DEXs where users are pretty disloyal with their liquidity, and it's a more cooperative and sustainable model. So we're excited about that because every chain needs a core DEX for apps to plug into, and it's the first cross-chain implementation.
Josh Kriger: Yeah, so you're speaking about apps that have a token economy, right? Yeah.
Jonathan Covey: So part of the next milestone for them would be having a project token. And so with the VE 3.3 model, users will be able to lock that in the protocol and then they have governance rights to determine where liquidity goes and which pools and fee structures and it's like the next iteration of the DEX model.
Josh Kriger: Very cool. DEX in a box.
Jonathan Covey: Yeah.
Josh Kriger: And then we have Toba Unified Stablecoin Initiative. So there has been conversation. I was just at a dinner in D.C. last week about the proliferation of stablecoins and like, you know, do we really need a thousand or ten thousand stablecoins? I guess your thought there is that they're coming. So let's figure out a creative way to unify them. Yeah, definitely. I think there'll be more stable coins outside of USDC and USDT, which have the large... Now, Tether announced, I guess, USAT, right? Yeah, and PayPal and Stripe. And you're seeing the same thing in the Korean market. Waiting for Taylor Swift stable coins coming eventually. I don't know that it'll be a stable coin.
Jonathan Covey: Maybe more meme related. But yeah, the issue, sort of like the blockchain dilemma, is you have all of these new players and issuance of stablecoins that exist across different blockchains. So there's like no one canonical asset for devs to build with, and users are looking for the right stablecoin on the right chain. And so the TOBA team in the Zeta ecosystem is building a unified liquidity layer for stablecoins. So it can accept native deposits of USDC on BASE, Solana, or KRW stablecoins on, I think, UPIT announced something, or some of the big banks like Shinhan Bank in Korea. So this is one pool where you can then mint a universal USDC token or universal KRW token.
Josh Kriger: Very cool. Well, I really appreciate you shedding some light on what Zaderchain is up to. Sort of looking ahead, you know, where do you guys see yourselves in the next few years in terms of what you would define as success in terms of your mission?
Jonathan Covey: Yeah, so our goal is to make it super easy for users and developers to access the features and utility across all the major networks. So if you achieve that goal, what does that look like?
Josh Kriger: You see hyper-adoption of this new universal app architecture.
Jonathan Covey: So when people build web-free applications, building on ZetaChain is kind of a default. I think there'll be multiple winners, but it's like, if you're a developer, why wouldn't you want to build your app so that anyone can use it? And if Data Chain is successful, then it's sort of like the de facto way to build universal apps in Web3.
Josh Kriger: Well, appreciate all that context. If people want to learn more about some of your products, your features, dig into ZetaChain a little bit, where should they go?
Jonathan Covey: Probably X, so at Zeta Blockchain. And we have a link three with like 55 different channels and 20 different languages. We're doing events all over the world, APAC, Korea, of course, and US. We're Silicon Valley based project. And yeah, you could follow some of the things we talked about, like Toba is about to release their testnet products. Beam is already on mainnet. You can do efficient cross-chain swaps. So a lot of cool products coming out.
Josh Kriger: All right. And are you on X as well?
Jonathan Covey: I am, at TaoistJC.
Josh Kriger: TaoistJC, nice hand off.
Jonathan Covey: Taoist underscore JC.
Josh Kriger: Well, thanks again for hanging out with us today. I hope you have a fruitful week here in Seoul.
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